We get a lot of questions about the issue of the overall odds in our games. The question generally comes in this form: Your instant-scratch game says it has overall odds of winning of 1 in 4.59. I bought five tickets, why didn’t I win?
The Iowa Lottery provides both the overall odds of winning in its games along with the odds of winning individual prize levels to try to provide the fullest amount of information possible about our games. But the issue of odds can be confusing, so I’ll try to explain it in a little more detail.
Let’s take the example I gave above: Our current “A Day At The Fair” scratch game has
The back of "A Day At the Fair" lottery ticket showing the game’s overall odds.
overall odds of winning of 1 in 4.59. That does not mean that if you buy five tickets in the game, one of those tickets will be a guaranteed winner. It means that if you bought all of the tickets available in the game, about 1 in 5 will win a prize.
Each of our games often involve millions of tickets and for security reasons, winning tickets are randomly distributed throughout each game to ensure that no one, not even lottery employees, knows exactly which tickets are winners. That also means that winning tickets in our games are in no particular order.
We’ll continue to provide detailed information about the odds in our games so our players have as thorough an understanding as possible about the issue. We consider sharing those details to be part of our mission to provide fun and entertainment while raising as much money as we can as responsibly as we can.
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